


Slytherin Politics

by OxfordOctopus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Broken Bones, Bullying, Slytherin, Slytherin Harry Potter, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 13:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19769158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: Abused children don't respond well to power plays.





	Slytherin Politics

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: This will include a graphic depiction of someone breaking someone else's fingers, it's unpleasant, intentional, and done sadistically. So be advised.
> 
> This also implies some things about how the upper years are treating Harry, including that some of them have started to grope him in an attempt to get a rise out of him, so watch out for that as well.

It begins with a missing sock. It’s innocuous, and is probably meant to be, Harry knows. This isn’t new to him, and his peers are impressively unsubtle even while they think they’re not. Malfoy and Nott are the most obvious out of the lot, the most inclined towards staring as his trunk comes up empty of the second sock, looking for how he reacts, _if_ he reacts. Harry doesn’t, of course, because like most things had been since he’d been dropped into Slytherin this is a _game_ , a cruel game, certainly, a game that bets torture instead of money or valuables, but a game nonetheless.

Harry keeps his face blank, his smile slight. It’s been barely a week and it’s already started, though you could make a good argument it’d started even before then, back when he was first sorted and the cap promised _greatness_ instead of _popularity_. He wasn’t suited for any other houses, the hat had said in rather blunt verse, the hat had even informed him that he could argue for another one and be put there, any response to his placement at all would be a good sign that he might find a better, more safe living environment in other houses, but without that it was clear he would rot. Boredom comes easily to him, he knows, and so did the hat; the hat knows too many things, really, and someone ought to eventually do something about that.

Snape hates him before he even interacts with him. Harry is used to this as well, unsubtle cruelty and irrational bitterness from authority. Maybe it’s the way he holds himself, intentionally placid, seemingly unaware of his surroundings, but he’s survived too much when wearing this mask for him to drop it now, for him to show an ounce of truthfulness to those around him. He can’t bring himself to feel safe without it, without the clean, placid mask that he wears to hide all the problems beneath. Internally, he hates Snape, emotionally he loathes the man for turning into another Vernon, for calling him pampered while the saggy, unwashed invalid likely spends his days buried in money and leering at any girl in the fifth year and above, but rationally he understands that the man simply cannot help himself, that while it hurts emotionally and makes anger flush to the surface, that nothing will hurt him more than not responding to his jabs.

Others, however, do act on it. It’s clear from the moment that Snape is being hypocritical towards his own preachy ‘rules’ - house unity, move in groups of two or three, what happens inside of the common room _stays_ in the common room, etc - that others are taking notice that Harry is, _somehow_ , not included in them. He’s already started to see the leers sinking into the older years, those looking for an easy target, though to what ends remain unknown, especially because a bulk majority of them want to hurt him, but want to make the hurt _last_. That’s the problem with schools like these, the politics seeps into a person, makes them stop thinking of others as people and more as outlets, turns everything into a game of bartering and manipulation with no real winners. Someone wants to see him hurt, see him confused and worried and make it _last_ , and for all there is to be said about being protective of their younger years, Harry is almost certain they know the one thing that will, well and truly, leave its mark.

But Malfoy and Nott aren’t seventh years. They’re eleven years old and have the collective social maneuvering ability of Dudley, a boy who routinely cries in public to get his way. They’re both pampered, both _entitled_ , and if there’s anything Harry knows well it’s handling the entitled. To give Dudley reprisal for his actions is a dangerous thing, and needs a certain set of criteria so he doesn’t just go running to Vernon or Petunia, both of whom will convene with the other to then plan some morbid scene where Vernon gets out his belt and beats the daylights out of him. Punishing Dudley is difficult, but it isn’t impossible, he just needs to be visibly unpunished and too cowed to tell anyone otherwise.

So when, on a sunny Monday morning, Harry finds his Charms textbook has had a third of its pages torn out and has been soaked in literal blood - Harry ought to give them credit for theatrics, really - he figures it’s about time to put this to rest. Malfoy is the first to laugh, talking about his own blood quality, how the Malfoy line can be sourced back to some of the aristocratic class in France, with Nott occasionally butting in, very unsubtly, about how you need to ‘rip the taint out at its source’, it’s more than obvious who in particular did this. They don’t expect reprisal, they don’t _understand_ that things have consequences because their parents have, in all likelihood, shielded them from it. For all of their boasting they expect nothing in return, they expect for Harry to be cowed, and he does make an act out of it. He twists his face down into a morose one, an expression that feels stiff and foreign but one that he knows look real. There’s giggling, Parkinson is leading that line of mockery, and it takes quite a bit of self-control to not let the expression slip, if only to show that it’s not affecting him.

Harry, personally, does not much like being mocked. It’s actually one of the very few things he can’t take, won’t take, _will never take_ , not around boys as thin as him with eight times the amount of food he gets. He intentionally arrives in Charms with the book, plays up the Professor’s pity, and does so in the other classes, draws that line that others in his year probably don’t notice, though to their credit it would seem like Greengrass caught on to what he was doing, but said nothing. Children don’t understand politics, don’t understand subtlety, at least not the ones who didn’t have to develop masks and sleight of hands to survive, so he wonders if Greengrass has faced similar problems to him.

By the end of the day, even when one sixth year bangs into him and has his arm too low, touching a place too intimate, knowingly or not, Harry is _pleased_. Pleased because he knows better, pleased because he intentionally puts his brand new, very-fawned-over-charms-textbook into his intentionally unlocked trunk in front of Malfoy and Nott, pleased that he mutters the spell beneath his lips that will put all of this to rest come the morning, if he’s so lucky.

He slips into bed, keeps that ‘nervous for tomorrow’ expression on his face, hides the glint of anger at the unstifled snickering, and lets himself doze.

It’s four, maybe five - you learn to have a good internal clock around Vernon and his moods - when someone screams. It’s pitched, violent wailing, bitten down on to keep too quiet for the head of the house to know, but not too quiet to startle everyone in the room - and likely in the girl’s room on the other side of the wall - out of their rest. Harry is already sliding out of his bed, smile slipping back onto his face, intentionally _warm_ , warm like the ones he gives teachers when their students end up falling down the stairs and are unwilling to name names. It’s a smile that is innocent, trained to an edge and intentionally malleable, always letting through choreographed emotions.

Malfoy’s on his knees - Harry finds that bit particularly funny - with his right hand jammed beneath the rim and main torso of the trunk. Three of his fingers are locked inside, and going by the way they’re starting to redden already, and are squished down hard. It looks painful.

“Potter!” The boy’s spat is far too loud, cutting through anyone who’s still asleep and likely rousing those curious from the other dormitories. “Turn this off!”

Harry cants his head to the side, imitating Ripper. “Do you want to know something really fascinating?”

“Pot—”

Harry’s foot finds itself in Malfoy’s ribs, drawing out a plaintive sob when the motion jerks his fingers to the side. “You shouldn’t interrupt your betters,” he quotes close to exactly what Malfoy had said when he’d first sat down at the Slytherin table after the sorting. “Anyway, did you know that for the last four hundred years, a fitting punishment for a thief was the loss of a hand?”

Malfoy sputters, his face getting a bit green, though whether or not that’s due to the pain or the commentary isn’t clear.

Harry lets the mask slip a bit, lets his eyes hollow out and lets the smile slide from his face. He lets his eyes dim and cloud over, go that _dead dead dead_ he sees in the mirror when nobody else is around. Malfoy’s indignation flinches back into him, as if it’s been struck, and it’s with a shudder that he suddenly realizes actions have consequences.

Harry leans down to tuck one hand against Malfoy’s head, tangling his fingers in the other boy’s hair. There’s a whimper from someplace in the back of the boy’s throat. “Now, I’m not such a reprobate to repeat the prejudices and actions of my ancestors from hundreds of years ago, unlike a certain few”—Nott, even when looking a bit ashen and a bit too green, makes a noise of anger at that—”but, you know, sometimes we have to learn from the past to avoid making _mistakes_ in our future.”

With a flourish, his wand comes clean from the pocket he kept it in. Harry levels the tip out against the top of the box, the Holly wand gleaming back at him, the promise of ‘great and terrible things’ keening in his ears like a mantra. The main spell he’d used was a simple _Mordeo_ , a delayed-activation Jinx that caused objects with hinges to slam down on someone’s fingers, though not usually with enough force to hurt, or at least not when it’s a book doing the chomping. Harry’s trunk, however, is solid wood and iron and heavier than he’d intended it to be, the featherlight charm deactivated for the time being, so it had nearly crushed Malfoy’s fingers and was continuing to press down on them, every movement giving it a tighter vice grip.

Harry glances up towards his onlookers, his mask still gone, his eyes still left empty and unfilled. Greengrass at the door looks green in the face, Davis flinches back when she notices he’s looking at her, Parkinson has the disturbing mixture of _fascination_ and something too close too arousal to be anything healthy, while Nott looks terrified, Crabbe and Goyle are still asleep, Zabini’s expression looks haunted, in a way that implies he’s seen this before, and Bulstrode looks grimly satisfied in a way that makes Harry almost _curious_. Malfoy, lastly, is pale as snow with tears in his eyes, shuddering and barely holding back tiny noises of pain.

“Now,” Harry smooths his hand over Draco’s too-silver hair, climbs to a stand, and makes a simple upside down triangle that’s a bit more thin than it is wide. “ _Pondus_.”

There’s a quiet moment where half the room flinches away, already knowing of the spell, where it's taking its time to interlace with the delayed-activation Jinx that already exists. Then, quite suddenly, there’s a wet _crack_ as the charm slides into place and quadruples the weight of the trunk’s lid, pulping Malfoy’s index, middle and ring finger’s middle. Nott retches wetly into his own hand, Malfoy screams, and those who haven’t already been put off by the action go a shade someplace between pale yellow and white.

Reaching down, Harry idly unclasps the two latches that had shut when Malfoy first had his fingers slammed down on, letting the lid of his trunk reel open like a great, gaping maw, and then slam back down. Something else in Malfoy’s hand breaks, someone lets out a dry sob - though not the boy this time - and Harry, simply, retrieves Malfoy’s hand from between the trunk’s lid, mangled as it is, and squeezes it once.

“The hell is going on in here?” One of the Prefects had finally made their arrival, looking tired as sin and twice as unhappy. Harry simply smiles, glances down at Malfoy, lets the normal expression he normally wears, the one full of emotions, slowly slide back into place in _full sight_ of him. Malfoy, still clasping his own hand, wilts at the sight.

“Just an accident,” Harry clarifies, glancing up. “ _Draco_ was going to get something for me out of my trunk, and the featherlight charm gave in, and since it’s an old and crudely built trunk…”

The Prefect, too tired to know any better, winced in understanding. “Yeah, alright, c’mon Malfoy, let's get you to Pomfrey’s.”

Malfoy and a few of his sycophants escape, leaving the half-parted crowd of first years and a few of the upper years. Harry beams at them a smile most of them now know is entirely fake, lets his teeth show, and watches as the first among them begins to bend beneath his gaze.

“So, breakfast anyone?”


End file.
